This invention relates to a device sorting apparatus, more particularly but not exclusively, for sorting Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
During electronic device manufacturing, it is common to implement quality tests and checks to determine the quality of electronic/electrical components, such as LEDs, for sorting. Indeed, in the case of LEDs, the LEDs may vary in brightness, colour and other parameters or characteristics and after testing of the LEDs, it is critical that the LEDs are sorted into bins according to their respective binning or electrical characteristics. Very often, a device sorting apparatus such as a high speed binning and sorting system is used to sort the LEDs. Such a system has a plurality of bins for storing LEDs according to their binning characteristics and a distribution module for distributing the tested LEDs to the correct bins. It is particularly useful for the distribution module to be of a rotary type and the distribution module would include a sensing device coupled thereto for detecting that a current LED in the distribution module has been unloaded before the next LED can be loaded into the distribution module. This is to ensure that devices are not wrongly mixed. Since the sensing device rotates together with the distribution module, sensor cables or wires attached to the sensing device needs to be of a certain length to allow the sensing device to rotate, or the distribution module (and the sensing device) needs to rotate bidirectionally to avoid twisting or breaking the cables or wires so as to prevent damage thereto.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a device sorting apparatus which addresses at least some of the disadvantages of the prior art,